Background: Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) are frequently hospitalized with an acute exacerbation. Patients with COPD often lose weight. Consequently, deterioration in nutritional status (loss of lean body mass) is a likely repercussion of acute exacerbation in hospitalized COPD patients. The study was carried out to assess the nutritional status of COPD patients with acute exacerbation, during the period of hospital admission, and to evaluate the relationships between the nutritional indices and the pulmonary function parameters.
Methods: A cross sectional observation study constituting 83 COPD patients consecutively hospitalized with acute exacerbation on accrual during a period of one year. Lung function was measured by routine spirometry. Nutritional status was assessed by the measurement of anthropometric parameters. Hospital outcome was also assessed. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 16.0 Independent t-tests and Pearsons correlation coefficient was used.
Results: Mean body weight was 50.03 ± 9.23 kg. Subjects had approximately 5 kg weight loss in previous six months. All the subjects had low BMI (19.38 ± 3.10) and MUAC (21.18 ± 2.31) that was significantly below the predicted levels. The correlation between body weight and FEV(1)/FVC% was good (r = 0.648, p = 0.003). BMI was negatively correlated (r = - 0.0103, p= 0.03) with duration of hospital stay.
Conclusions: The high prevalence of malnutrition among hospitalized COPD patients with acute exacerbation is related to their lung function and hospital outcome such as duration of hospital stay.
Keywords: Nutritional status; COPD; Acute exacerbation; Hospitalization.